


The Living versus the Dead

by Duster6789



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, F/M, One Shot, White Walkers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-29
Updated: 2020-02-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:08:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22956925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duster6789/pseuds/Duster6789
Summary: The Others/White Walkers have got passed The Wall and are attacking Westeros. Gendry is with The Brotherhood and has joined the fight against them. This is a one shot of the times he sees Arya again.————Side note: I couldn’t think of a good title and am happy to take on suggestions! Call it an interactive fic.
Relationships: Arya Stark & Gendry Waters, Arya Stark/Gendry Waters
Comments: 2
Kudos: 60





	The Living versus the Dead

1.  
“I can’t explain it but sometimes I think that she’s alive somewhere,” Gendry found himself saying, for the first time, out loud.

Anguy frowned at him and raised his cup of ale to his mouth for a long drink. “Gendry, I hate to say it, but that sounds more like wishful thinking. I know how much the little lady meant to you but she can’t have survived being at The Twins when it was overrun with wights-“

Gendry had been trying to get a word in and managed to overpower Anguy’s voice to interrupt, “we don’t know that she even made it there! The Hound was with her and he got away. I heard he was building a Sept somewhere and had found the faith of the Seven-“

“That is just rumour, Gendry!”

“Thoros saw it in the flames-“

“Why would the Lord of Light show that?”

“I don’t know!”

“No... we don’t know anything for sure. She could be alive! The likelihood is that she’s not!” Anguy’s last few words stunned Gendry into silence as he fought to hide his emotion at the thought. Anguy continued, “I’m sorry, it’s just, I’m trying to be realistic. Westeros has gone to shit, The Dead have completely taken the North and the Neck, we’re sitting here in the Riverlands because they can’t seem to get past the Red Fork. You and me, we’ve watched others come and go, you’re the smith that fixes the wildfire damaged swords - because fire is the only way we know to kill The bastard Dead - so they keep you out of the main fights, and I’m an archer who can shoot fire at them from a nice safe distance. Sure, we can both fight well enough but they keep us around for strategic reasons. So we watch new recruits come in and die weeks later. I’m growing really tired of death.” 

Gendry stayed silent. Everything that Anguy said rang true. The reason they had become such close friends was because everyone else they knew kept dying.

“Gendry... you and Arya... did you... you know? Did your friendship, er, change?”

Gendry flushed with embarrassment and rage, “Anguy! No! She was a kid!”

“It’s just, you were this little team, and she gets pally with Ned Dayne and suddenly you’re shouting at each other and you’re asking to stay with The Brotherhood. It crossed my mind that maybe there was a bit more there if you were both getting jealous. She was more than a kid when she left-“

“Look... it wasn’t like that. She was literally the only person who cared if I lived or died since my Mum died. I would have stayed with her and been her faithful sidekick forever, but then I remembered that she was a Lady who would marry a Lord and leave me as a servant to her family. I didn’t think she would run away and get herself killed,” he stopped speaking before his voice became too thick with emotion.

“Oh... so you actually loved her then?”

He hadn’t thought he had loved her at the time, but he missed her every day, his heart jolted every time he saw a girl who looked even slightly like her and he refused to believe that a girl as strong as her was dead. He nodded once, “like family.”

2.  
Gendry was repairing chain mail when Anguy burst into the little forge at Acorn Hall. “You better come with me, mate, you’d never believe me if I tried to tell you.”

He was busy, and normally he would have no problem with telling someone not to bother him, but something in Anguy’s eyes made him down tools and follow his friend. 

He was guiding him back to the house when another girl who looked like Arya Stark walked out of the back doors and made his heart jolt. Only this one was heading straight towards him and, with every step closer, she was looking more and more like the real thing. It was in the way that she walked, purse of her lips, the grey of her eyes... but it couldn’t be... could it?

He crushed her into an embrace and she didn’t resist like he thought she might. They had never been affectionate before, and so the action felt out of character, but he had grown so used to accepting death that a happy reunion seemed to warrant his reaction. “I knew you weren’t dead,” he said, his words muffled by his face in her hair.

“I’m glad you’re not,” she said pulling away and looking into his eyes. “I need your help.”

She sat with him all afternoon, despite the heat in the forge, she wanted him to melt down a necklace made of obsidian and make a blade with it. It was an odd piece of jewellery, obsidian looked like tar solidified and so was hardly beautiful. It couldn’t be hammered into shape, only moulded once molten and then neatened when cooled. It had been used as embellishments in armoury because high borns love to impress other high borns with things that were hard to make. To make an intricate chain out of it was incredible. He was almost loathed to melt it down.

He did as he was told though. He melted it down, moulded, sharpened and shattered dragonglass, and started again, until a blade was finally formed. It took more attempts than he could count. Gendry was extremely thankful that Arya was pretty quiet throughout the day instead of criticising him like she would have a few years previously.

Arya was testing the strength and sharpness of the knife by throwing it into a wooden pillar, taking it out, returning to her position and hitting the same point again every time she threw it. 

“So you told me that you went to Braavos and learned to fight. You told me you met the Maester-in-training for The Wall and his... paramour? I didn’t think the Nights Watchmen could take a lover.”

“It’s all about perspective, isn’t it? Kings, Queens, Lords, Ladies, bastards, wildlings... all men must die... and when Death is physically walking around, then everyone alive is equal, and basic needs like love shouldn’t be denied to anyone.”

He swallowed down the words that he wanted to say in response and focused on watching her as she hit her target again. “So what happens now? You have your blade, what are you going to do with it?”

“Kill the King of the Dead.”

Watching her, Gendry felt like they could actually win the war.

3  
Gendry didn’t feel safe on Dragonstone. Half-Maester Sam had written to Arya to tell her that Dragonstone was built on dragonglass, ripe for mining, and to meet him there. King Stannis Baratheon was seated there and looked at Gendry in the most peculiar way. The Lady Melisandre, who was always at his side, looked at him like she would eat him. It made him want to run away but they were on an island.

“You are a strong young man, just like your father was before you,” said an eerily silky voice. The voice matched the woman, she dressed in fine red silks that matched her flowing hair. He supposed that she did it in homage to the Lord of Light, but the shade of red was too dark, too much like blood.

“I never knew my father, I don’t think my mother even knew who he was, so unless the flames have told you who he was then I doubt you know either, m’lady,” he added the courtesy at the end to attempt to hide the bitterness in his words.

“Stannis says that you are half lowborn, half Robert Baratheon himself. You look just as he did at your age. Not knowing your father only confirms it was King Robert even moreso.”

Gendry knew that this conversation was dangerous but he didn’t know how. He took a guess, “I will be sure to stay away from his Grace, King Stannis then m’lady. I am not going to claim to be a Baratheon when I never have been. I am here under Lady Arya’s instructions, to make dragonglass weapons, for the fight with the Dead.”

She looked him over and he felt instantly sick. “Yes you will certainly play your part in the wars to come,” she told him as she stalked away.

“You should leave the island, boy, while you still have the chance. I have already sent a young man, who looked like you, into exile for his own safety. It isn’t safe here for you while she is here, and she is watching you now,” Gendry recognised the man to be Ser Davos. Arya’s brother Jon trusted this man implicitly and Gendry couldn’t help but feel a regard for him too.

“Smithing is what I do, this is the most useful that I can be in this war, I can’t leave before I have finished.”

“Instruct some other smiths on what you have learned about the stuff before you go then. That woman believes there is a God in fire and she has other ideas on how you can be useful. She tried to burn the last boy as a sacrifice. You need to get away.”

The feelings of unease and fear were suddenly justified and Gendry knew exactly what he had to do. He found the Master Smith but the man was too arrogant to listen to instructions and so he told every single smith individually. Mould the dragonglass and then shave it to a point once cooled, chipping away at it will just shatter it. The sun was starting to go down when he finished helping twelve men complete batches of dragonglass daggers.

He found Anguy sitting in a courtyard drinking ale and pulled him away to talk to him privately. There were too many balconies in courtyards, you never knew who was listening. Once he had explained what Melisandre and Davos had told him, Anguy looked less surprised than Gendry had anticipated.

“I’m from the Stormlands Gend, I know the Baratheon look, I just didn’t think it was important to tell you. It’s not like you were going to claim Storm’s End or anything.”

Gendry decided to push aside the initial anger that his friend hadn’t told him, who could know that someone would want to burn him alive for it? Instead, he turned soft with emotion, “will you tell Arya? I don’t want her to think I ran away because I am a coward.”

“Oh Gendry, you’re a fucking idiot. First of all, I’m not staying here without you. Second of all, you are a coward if you don’t go and talk to her yourself. That girl would be heartbroken if you just left her for The Brotherhood a second time without telling her that you love her.”

“I-“ he paused, knowing better than to lie when he didn’t have the time. He had to get away as soon as possible. “She is with her kind here, Kings and Lords and Ladies, I bet she’s wearing a dress right now for their evening meal.”

“These people are not her kind. She’s uncomfortable here, she hides from them, she’s with me most of the time or watching you work - not that you ever seem to notice.”

“I have nothing to offer her, if we were to have a life together, she would come to resent me because I can’t give her the food or the clothes or anything that she’s used to.”

“Why the fuck does she love you?” The new information hit Gendry physically in his chest. “You don’t know her at all. She’s been living in survival mode since she was ten, sleeping rough, eating what she can catch, she doesn’t want things. All she wants are the people who love her. Go and fucking tell her right now or I will. I feel like the third person in this relationship-“ Anguy stopped cold, his eyes wide as they fell onto something behind Gendry. It made him turn cold as well as he turned.

There stood Arya, draped in a pale grey gown that hugged her figure in all the most incredible places, how could he tell her when there was no way he could ever deserve her?

“How long have you been there?” Gendry asked her.

“I saw the two of you sneak out of the courtyard and followed you. So you’re leaving?” She looked hurt which gave Gendry hope that she cared for him, yet she had glossed over all of the conversation that she must have heard regarding his feelings for her.

“I’m not safe here, I want to live to be able to fight. I can’t die a pointless death here. The red priestess wants to offer me as a sacrifice to her Lord of Light.”

“Ok, so go. You told me now. I’m going back to my own kind,” Arya turned to walk away.

“Don’t you fucking dare go,” Anguy had clearly lost his temper. “You stay here and talk to him. You’re both as stubborn as each other. If you let him leave like this then you might never see him again, do you understand? By the Gods I need a drink. I’m going. You stay. Got it?” He stormed away muttering to himself as he walked.

Arya watched him go before turning to sheepishly look at Gendry again.

“I love you,” he told her simply. His logic was to get the most difficult part out of the way yet it seemed to stun her into a rare silence. “I don’t really know what to do with that love, but it is there. In a world where Death is everywhere, you should just know that I’m not leaving you because I want to.” He reached out for her hand, which was a risk, they still weren’t particularly affectionate even though he had been falling for her since she returned. She was like a deer who could startle easily. To his surprise, she linked her fingers in his.

“I think I have always loved you. I trusted you easily, possibly naively, and whenever I got scared in Braavos I would think about being with you instead.”

The kiss that followed was instinctive. Gendry melted into it, bringing his spare hand to the small of her back to hold her closer. When they broke apart, his chest felt lighter and he found himself chuckle in reaction.

4  
The Wall had been compromised at Eastwatch and with it came a sense of purpose for the Dead. They were no longer paused at the Red Fork. They were fighting their way across the rivers. 

In the thick of war and battles with The Dead, it was the small moments with Arya that Gendry clung to as he reason to keep going. The war stretches across the country and they met again at Riverrun.

When she arrived, he caught her attention as she passed for a few seconds before leaving her to reunite with her family.

She came to the forge when only he remained working. It wasn’t like their other meetings, the second her eyes bore into his the air felt heavy with lust. He abandoned his work and moved to kiss her with more passion than he knew he had in him. She threw her arms around his neck and leaned back, pulling him closer to her. He scooped her up and placed her on the workbench so their faces were more on a level and continued to kiss her. He was acting on impulse. He ran his hands up her legs as he stood between them and she shuddered. It was only then that he snapped out of what he was doing.

“Gendry,” she breathed, “Gendry, show me what it’s like. I want to know what it’s like before I die.”

She asked him to show her but they moved together and took care of each other’s needs.

Afterwards, when she lay in his arms on the forge worktop under his cloak, he could swear he had never felt happiness like it.

“Arya?”

“Mhmm?”

“How do we make this last forever?”

She opened her beautiful eyes, her hair falling into them slightly and so he moved his hand to move the offending hair. She smiled at him and his breath left his body, “let’s focus on trying to live before we start thinking about forever.”

———————

When he swung his dragonglass mace, only to not meet any impact, he nearly fell. Exhaustion had completely overtaken his body. The Dead had fallen and there was no explanation for it. Except for the King that Arya had talked about. If necromancy had brought the wights to life then the spell could be broken if the necromancer died. He kicked the lifeless form in front of him just to be sure.

He slid to the ground and took in his surroundings for a moment or two. He could have fallen asleep but decided he better move.

Gendry found Anguy on the battlements, with a huge gash in the side of his leg, but alive. He took off his belt and made a tourniquet at the top of Anguy’s leg to stop the bleeding, “can you move if you put your weight on me?” Anguy mustered a nod in response.

Gendry stood up to plan his route before grasping his friend. He took Anguy to the Maester and fell asleep at his bedside.

He awoke to a stinging pain on his forehead and sat bolt upright. Arya was tending to his wounds as he slept. “I’m sorry, I was trying to be gentle.”

“You’re alive!” He pulled her wrist until they were in an embrace. Once he had hold of her he made a decision that he would never let her go.

5  
“It’s not me,” Arya told him, deflated.

“We could run away if you wanted? Go back to Braavos?”

“I don’t think I can go back there. I stole something when I left.”

Gendry sighed. “Arya, you were chosen because you saved the realm by killing the King of the Dead. You are the best person to protect the realm. Have you thought about it? Really thought about it? I think you imagine wearing dresses and doing embroidery and being the kind of Lady that your mother and your sister told you to be... but you would be the Queen. You would make your own rules. The things that matter to you would become what matter. You said once that you wanted to be the Lord of a holdfast but your father said you couldn’t, you would have to marry a Lord and your sons would be Lords... you are being offered the whole realm! And because you earned it! Do you really want to step aside and let a man take over and have nothing change?”

“Gendry, I honestly think you have never spoken so much.”

“Yeah well, give me a topic that I care about and I will talk for hours. There is nothing that I care about more than Arya Stark,” he moved closer to her and held her hand.

“First of her name,” she beamed at him. “Will you help me? Be with me? I think I will need you to help me remember what is important, to challenge me when I need it.”

He kissed her soundly, “I was never going to do anything else.”


End file.
